The hardest part of going for a run is putting on your shoes.

The hardest part of running away from the Seelie Keeper, however, is probably his magical powers and enormous wings. In the human realm, keeper often refers to someone who prevents a ball from entering the net in sports. In the fae realm, the Keeper is a ruler, a judge, and a rather grumpy know- it- all with very strong opinions about the world and everyone in it. The fae Keeper also just hap- pens to be my father.

You can call me Fern, and though I’m the one speaking, this is not my story.

If it were, I might tell you that I was born with red hair and beautiful, sparkling wings. I might tell you that I was happy for years and years, eating sweet pies and drinking grape juice and taking naps in the moss, until I discovered that I have three spectacular talents.

My first gift is the ability to travel. If I close my eyes and think of a destination, I open them, and I’m there! How marvellous, right? It was quite useful when my parents would hide the cookies on the topmost shelves. My mother and father had no idea why the jars of sweets would go missing no matter where they hid them.

My second power is the rather useful ability to find things. I can uncover a single sock if I’ve misplaced its partner, I can locate freshwater streams in the middle of the desert, and I can find demifae children— boys and girls and kids of all sorts with one parent who is human and one who is fae— caught in the cracks between worlds.

My third power is the ability to drink a gallon of milk in thirty seconds. That one might not be as useful.

One gift I don’t have is the chance to see whether I will perish or be squished or vanish off the face of the earth, or if I will live to see another day. That particular gift is owned by the very bright, and deeply in trouble, Rosemary Thorpe. She hasn’t done anything wrong, you see, but she’s certainly ended up somewhere she does not belong.

And that brings us to a burbling fountain, a mossy floor, an indoor patch of wildflowers, a twisted vine that takes orders from its master, a talking statue, a jewelled throne, and my very angry father as he towers over Rosemary, demanding to know how she found her way through the Lost Woods.

You see, my father— a greedy fairy with unpleasant ideas— wants to be able to go to any realm he wishes. It isn’t enough to be the ruler of the Seelie court, not for him. He believes the worlds should belong to whoever has the most power, and he is quite powerful indeed. As such, the man has quite a few strong opinions about who should rule the human realm, and he would quite like to know how to get there. It’s part of why my father and I can no longer be friends. I have the gift of travel, after all, and it’s the one thing he cannot do. Not without help, anyway.

If Rosemary tells him how to get from one realm to the next, her fretful time in the court will come to an end. He will certainly release her from the horrible vine that’s currently lashed her legs to the stool in the middle of his throne room. He will probably offer her sweets and have the fauns and pixies braid flowers into her hair.

The fate of the realms, however, depends on her ability to keep this secret.

The hardest part of going for a run is putting on your shoes. And lucky for us all, Rosemary Thorpe was already wearing her favourite sneakers when the time came to run…